Center for the Study of Childcare Employment

This report analyzes labor trends for the early care and education workforce over the past 25 years – notably, an overall decrease in educational qualifications, and persistent wage stagnation – in the light of federal and state policy, and makes a series of recommendations for reversing these downward trends. Losing Ground in Early Childhood Education: Declining Workforce Qualifications in an Expanding Industry, 1979-2004 by Stephen Herzenberg, Mark Price, and David Bradley (2005) is the paper that prompted this policy analysis.